In July, we passed the five-year mark in our business. It's a milestone for the company and as a husband and wife founder team. Looking back on photographs and our weekly emails (This month marks #114 emails, plus the blogs.) reminds us to be proud of the progress. When you're knee-deep in all the things, you forget how much has been accomplished. The list of future goals is long, so we don't spend much time looking behind us. We'll make an exception today and take a moment to share photos from our first year compared to today. Here are three lessons learned, a testament to how things change over time.
1. Partner preferences.
If your significant other, with whom you are in business, tells you they don't want to be involved in “X” (finances, operations, marketing, sales, business), believe them. Don't spin your wheels trying to use your superior persuasion skills only to be frustrated. Take that energy and find an alternative; do it yourself, hire help, ask a colleague, move forward. If your partner changes their mind, great; if they don't, you've already found a solution. For those of us who are more stubborn or persistent :) this lesson took a while to learn.
2. Pause before you proceed.
As designers of handcrafted wood pieces, we like to create new pieces each year to add to our selection. We listen to our clients, look at the Marketplace, consider the trends and go from there. With a talented craftsman at the helm of our workshop, there are many beautiful options to consider. What type of wood, which combinations, what is the price of wood, and how can we make this efficiently in quantity? Creating a brand new design is about a three-month process, from design options to prototypes, evaluations, and final craftsmanship edits. Once the specialty item is declared complete, photos are taken, descriptions written, and content is created for the website.
Creating a new product is not something we take lightly, and it's done with intention and careful consideration. In the early days, we made pieces and posted them online in a much shorter time frame. Then, we'd inevitably determine that a few design tweaks would look even better and allow for a more efficient process. But by that time, all the front office work of descriptions, promotions, pricing, and posting had been done. It's not ideal to backtrack from there. No one is happy to rewind a project at this point.
Today, the process has evolved and allows a window of time between when it's "finished" and when the front office team engages. We let any brand new designs rest on the workshop bench for a time for us to review and discuss. This way, any changes in the design can be done at a reasonable pace; there's no wasted time or money spent before the final version is complete.
3. Sometimes, things don’t go as planned.
In 2020, we wanted to create a holiday card to bring "Joy" to our clients. You may remember there was a U.S. election that year and a global pandemic happening. A big decision was determining when to send the card. Before the election? Is that too early, and people would be distracted? Or later, after Thanksgiving, they'd be swamped with other holiday cards and seasonal events. It was decided that "Joy" was a good thing to send earlier that year rather than wait, so the first week of November was it.
Our cards were meant to be fun and included a tear-off postcard (stamp included) that you could mail to family, friends, or a colleague. Checkboxes and fill-in-the-blanks let the sender personalize the message. Many hours went into the design and handwritten notes on each card. We were excited to send them off, imagining the big smiles of our recipients during such difficult times. Weren't we surprised when people sent us photos of their festive holiday cards arriving in March 2021? Say what? Turns out that the postal service had some machinery removed, and deliveries were impacted that season. All that excitement and debate around the perfect date didn't matter. It wasn't exactly the seasonal impact we had planned, but we like to believe that joy is welcome anytime.
Photos below left to right: The workshop has expanded significantly with tools and ergonomically improved design; we started with two box options, detailed specialty boxes and other pieces have since been added; and the days when “red” was still red, and today.
